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Saturday, May 16, 2020

Welcome to a new era of Weekend Cooking

Well.....that escalated quickly. Two weeks ago, I was acknowledging BethFishRead's amazing job at hosting Weekend Cooking for so long and now, here I am hosting for the first time. How did that happen?

All jokes aside, I am excited to be the new host of Weekend Cooking starting from this week

I thought today I would share a few thoughts about my experience of participating in Weekend Cooking has been over the last ten years.

My first post to Weekend Cooking was for a very Australian and New Zealand recipe (it's one of those recipes that we squabble over) - Anzac Biscuits. What I learned in that first post, and have been reminded lots of times over subsequent years is that ingredients that are commonplace in one country is not necessarily commonplace in another. In the comments for that post are questions like what is golden syrup and what is caster sugar? And I can't tell you how many times I have commented on a post from another participant to say I've never even heard of xxxxx before let alone cooked with it!

Over the years I have shared many recipes. Some times I have shared recipes because I have made them just once. Other times they are aspirational in that I want to make them....one day. Some times I share because I think that other people might be interested but there are lots of times when I share a recipe so that I can find it when I want to cook it again so it is really selfish. For example, not too long ago I shared a recipe for Mexican Chicken and Rice that I really only posted because I was fed up of not being able to find the blue envelope that the recipe was written on the back of!

Those of you who were around many years ago would have followed the cooking exploits of my son. He went through a phase in his pre and early teens of being very interested in cooking. Now, we force him to cook one meal a week but other than that he wouldn't really be that keen. The thing is though he can cook for himself if he has to. The tag that I used at the time was Adventures of a Little Chef which is kind of ironic now given that he is 6'10 tall and spent a couple of years at college in America playing basketball!

Looking back you can also see how my interest in the last few years has turned to baking. I have learned that I can make complicated things and that I really enjoy challenging myself, although it never quite looks exactly as good as I want it too. It could also be that I am my own harshest critic though.

Over the years, I have posted all sorts of other things in Weekend Cooking in addition to recipes. There were posts about foodie movies, TV, books, excerpts, music about food, memorable meals, fancy dinners - anything and everything really, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

I had a period where I just wasn't reading much and therefore I wasn't blogging about books much, but I was still always thinking about and posting things for Weekend Cooking. For a little while there Weekend Cooking was the only thing that kept me blogging. It is also probably the topic that I have the most ideas about when it comes to what to post. I actually have around 4 or 5 posts either fully or partially written sitting in draft waiting for their turn to be posted.

Once again, I want to thank BethFishReads for doing such an amazing job with Weekend Cooking over the years. I have very big shoes to fill and I can only hope that I can post things that are half as interesting as her posts have been over the years. Thank you also for allowing me to take this on. I will do my best to build on what you have built.

So a couple of things

I am based in Australia and so timezone wise I am from the future (compared to most of you anyway)! My aim will be to have my Weekend Cooking post with the Mr Linky scheduled to post on Saturday morning my time, which is Friday evening in the US. However, please don't feel that you have to amend your own posting times as a result. You can link up whenever you post. I will also make every effort to visit everyone.

I am not planning on making any fundamental changes to the way that Weekend Cooking works at this stage. It is still going to continue as a pretty casual place to share your thoughts around food, cooking, food in movies, books or anything else. We might try a couple of new things at some point but not quite yet.

I hope that if you are an existing participant that you continue to enjoy participating each week, and if you are just thinking about participating for the first time then welcome!

I also wanted to say thanks to Melynda from Scratch Made Foods who put together the button below. Thanks Melynda! I am thinking about doing a complete revamp of my blog in due course, but in the mean time, please feel free to grab the button to use on your posts.

And now, let me see if I can remember how to embed Mr Linky.....

Yes I can!! Let me know what you think of Mr Linky with the thumbnail. I like the idea of having a picture accompanying the link but I found it a little bit fiddly to add so I'll be interested to hear what you thought.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.

40 comments:

Marg, So grateful that you decided to take over Weekend Cooking-It's become a part of my weekend ritual and I really look forward to it. Somehow I showed up twice with two different photos. Don't know why.. but not sure if you can fix.. #3 was my intention..

I'm very happy that you have taken over Weekend Cooking. I'm a huge reader, and one of my favorite sorts of reading is the reading of cookbooks. Weekend Cooking has always been a natural fit for my blog, and, even when I don't post, I love to visit other blogs linking to Weekend Cooking.

Oh, I may have entered my link about 4 times, if so could you delete the duplicates, please? I can't seem to get my photo in and it won't let me proceed to link.So...if I duplicated please delete. If I didn't enter at all, here is my link if you want:

Thanks so much for carrying on the tradition, Marg. As I am fairly new here, I don't remember the "little chef" but will have to go back and read them. Maybe when he is older my son will have his own cooking series!

This Linky is different, but once you get it, it is great! I agree, I like the photos too. Marg, thanks so much for continuing on and keeping Weekend Cooking on board. And to Beth Fish Reads, thanks to your many years hosting, it was always (and will continue to be!) my favorite place to visit.

I have a lot of fun reading recipes from other countries and finding people asking what on earth that ingredient is. You'd never think many of us share a common language - our cooking terms are so different

Hi Marg -- Thanks for taking over hosting duties! I haven't had time to participate in a while, so your first time hosting is my fist time back. I don't mind the thumbnail linky, even though it is a little confusing. I just started using it myself for Book Beginnings on Fridays and it is a little janky, but it works.

Wow! I missed one week and look what happened! Thank you, Marg, for taking over! I just went back and updated my post with the new badge, etc. You do have big shoes to fill, but you can do it, I'm sure. I also had a blogging slump when Weekend Cooking was the only post I could manage even sporadically. Then I had a slump where I couldn't even manage Weekend Cooking, so I'm just getting back into the swing of it. Ten years is huge! I struggled a little bit with the picture when adding my link, but I think I thought something else was supposed to happen after I hit "Close Window" and it was actually done.

Marg, thanks so much for keeping this going! I have been a sporadic linker but have been a bit more persistent recently. I cannot link today. Tried many different ways. I may try a different browser and see if it works. If not, here is my post: http://eliotseats.com/2020/05/18/resurrecting-rain-tlc/ Love the new widget.

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About Me

Once upon a time I was all about books but these days not so much. Now I will be more likely to be cooking. My adventures through time and place used to be all without leaving the pages of my book.. Now real life is an adventure.

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